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EPUK Weekly News |
Once a week we put together a roundup of the week's photography, media and copyright news. It's free and you don't have to meet the usual EPUK membership criteria to sign up. We don't give your details to anyone else, and you can unsubscribe anytime.
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This week EPUK discussed ... |
Chasing copyright infringers; File FX; more rights-grabbing competitions; why DACS is for photographers and not for agencies
… and …
the BBC and licensing agreements.
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How I made £27k from two evenings tracking down copyright infringementsWhile current copyright law still favours the copyright thieves, two evenings spent researching where my photographs were being used amassed me £27,000 in unpaid reproduction fees, writes EPUK moderator David Hoffman |
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I want to finish on a positive note but it’s not easy. I think that we can be optimistic about the future of rights control, if not about making any money from it. Technology is making it easier to find images on the web and in print. Military technology filters down. The computer algorithms designed to show up a Scud in the desert can be retuned to show up your image in a mess of other pictures. The beauty of these systems is that they do not depend on hidden watermarks or on your details being left untampered within the file info. It’s the actual image that is picked up. Even if it’s cropped or rotated or manipulated. Copyright checklistAssert your rights and ownership on every photograph Use Google images to find jpg files Use Google to find other search engines Check the related sites with Google maps Concentrate on your specialist subjects Use the Wayback Machine Find WHO IS behind the site with “whois” Search the text inside books with Amazon Join EPUK and get help from over 700 other editorial photographers Companies like PicScout offer this as a commercial service although their terms of business aim at large libraries and make them too expensive for us. No doubt the technology will become more widely available and perhaps offer us a system that could crawl the web on our behalf, reporting back when it finds one of our images. Polar Rose are making face recognition technology available on the web. Show it a face, it’ll remember it and point out matches when it finds them. Our best weapon, Google, may prove to be a two edged sword. Last year they bought a little known company called Neven Vision who are specialists in image recognition. Imagine the power of Google’s search and database storage combined with fast, accurate image recognition. Just like with text, if it’s on the web Google gives it to you in a fraction of a second. If you are tracking your own work it will instantly find your picture. If you are a buyer it will find the pictures you need and it will find others like your picture so you can haggle with the sellers. I can see nothing to stop Google becoming the new super agency, gobbling up everything from Getty on down – and you won’t even need to submit your work to have it included. That’s a scary prospect, we’ve already seen how rapidly rates drop when the supply increases, Google could make just about every image there is available and could still make a good profit licencing them at a quid a pop. That’s the end of professional stock, it would instantly move every collection into microstock. We may still be running our own personal supermarket with no doors and an honesty box instead of a till but at least we can make sure our security guards are frisking the customers. Good hunting. Related storiesMost commentedShare                                
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Comments on this article:
Hi David, Comment #2 posted by Arch White at 9 March, 12:10 PM Excellent article, some really practical solutions to protecting images in the first place and hunting down those that might be stolen. I’ve had two instances where my images have been used outside any licence and I’ve discovered this by chance – I expect there are a few more out there to be honest. Comment #4 posted by David J Colbran at 13 March, 09:21 AM Thanks for the wake up call, I think we are too lazy when it comes to protecting our images, its a big catch 22.. we want and need to show our pixs on the web, but once you do, you leave yourself open to all the crooks who want to steal your work. Its all to easy to use one of your pixs off the web, uncredited and unpaid.. “oh! we’re sorry we did try and find you but failed.” This is no excuse!! It’s a fine line we have to tread between making our work available and secure at the same time, we have to be more vigilant and keep our eyes open. sean aidan. Comment #5 posted by sean aidan at 14 March, 01:36 PM David is the copyright ferret running up the legs of unscrupulous publishers. I have long been a fan! His advice made me enough money last year for a trip to china! Comment #6 posted by Garry Clarkson at 5 July, 07:58 PM Hi, I stumbled upon your article whilst researching information on the release of photographs into the public domain, and it has certainly given me food for thought. Thank you for your well documented advice. Comment #7 posted by Carbuncle at 13 September, 02:08 PM Regarding the use of PicScouts services: Please be aware that the subversive and resource consuming techniques used by PicScouts bots, and the heavy-handed intimidating tactics used by their ‘debt’ collectors are causing a large degree on consternation amongst web-masters and the owners of web-sites. Many of the webmasters I know are actively ceasing to use stock photography from clients of PicScout (Getty, Corbis, iStockPhoto etc) and going elsewhere if stock photography is required. I am 100% behind photographers and artists being paid for use of their copyright material – particularly as I have the artistic ability of a house brick and the photographic skills of a visually illiterate teenager – but cannot endorse the use of PicScout for various technical, ethical and social reasons. Please view my full articles on the subject before responding: PicScout Hacking: PicScout leads to intimidation: Comment #8 posted by William Faulkner at 27 September, 12:02 PM WoW! A real eye opener and crammed with practical advice. Many thanks for your time and knowledge. Comment #9 posted by rob Fawcett at 4 February, 07:14 PM Would you consider it unreasonable to use the copyright laws as an aid to entrap people so you can repeatedly take them to the small claims court. Imagine over the course of around ten years you had never visibly marked your images on your website, knowing that now and again someone will unknowingly or unwittingly copy this image innocently, without awareness of the copyright laws. Then you take them to court and sue for copyright infringement. Now imagine you repeatedly follow this process because you know sooner or later it will happen again, making you a lot of money. DESPITE THE KNOWLEDGE THAT YOUR IMAGES ARE NOT VISIBLY MARKED AS RECOMMENDED ON YOUR WEBSITE, AND YOU ARE AWARE THEY WILL SOONER OR LATER GET USED BY SOMEONE WHO HAS NO INTENTION OR KNOWLEDGE OF BREAKING THE LAW, WOULD IN MY VIEW BE MORALLY WRONG. It gives photographers a bad name. I am aware of someone who XXXXXXXX XXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX [Content redacted due to potentially libelous content - EPUK Website Editor] He still does not have any visible markings on any of his images on his website and over the course of the past ten years has “pursued his rights” to the bitter end. He continues to do this to this day. He is also a member of your EPUK ORGANISATION. I fully appreciate your article and your rights to your copyrighted images but I feel there are times that this is knowingly abused, especially in the case in question. If you were aware that a member of your organisation was using these tactics to make a living would you be concerned as to their behaviour and their use of abusing the copyright laws to their advantage. Comment #10 posted by colin askew at 9 February, 04:38 PM @ Colin Askew It’s difficult to know where to begin with your comment – although legally we were obliged to start by deleting all the potentially libelous content from your post. You are being taken to court over an alleged breach of copyright – and in your comment here, and your subsequent email to me, you appear to accept the basis of the plaintiff’s case is fundamentally true. The photographer whose work you allegedly infringed, is not, despite your assertion, a member of EPUK. To make this absolutely clear: EPUK.org, EPUK Ltd, this article and it’s author have no relevance to your court case whatsoever. You seem to think that by not watermarking his images on his website (which has clear copyright notices on every page, plus a whole other page dealing with copyright), this photographer somehow forced either you or your web designer to commit copyright infringement. As legal defences go, it ranks alongside “she had a short skirt on, so she was asking for it”. I can’t wait until you discover that supermarkets just leave their products out on shelves where anyone can pick them up, instead of hiding them behind a counter and only handing them over when customers pay for them. My goodness – they’re entrapping people into shoplifting ! As far as EPUK is concerned, this is now an end to this matter. Instead of trying to fight a court case on the interwebs, based on what you would like to pretend the law should be, I politely suggest your time would be better spent taking responsibility for your actions, and talking to a lawyer well versed in copyright law, lest you end up looking like even more of an idiot – this time in front of a sheriff or judge. Comment #11 posted by Nick McGowan-Lowe, EPUK Website Editor at 24 April, 10:31 AM Great article and great comments! Have been looking for a way to track images on the internet and so am grateful for the resources and explanation. Comment #12 posted by Alex Orrow at 9 December, 11:15 AM Great article and great comments! Have been looking for a way to track photographs on the internet and so am grateful for the resources and explanation.As a photographer with many images posted on the internet and used widely on many websites. I hope that the tools to track images will become more versatile and comprehensive. Comment #13 posted by Alex Orrow at 9 December, 11:19 AM Add your comments here:
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Hi David,
An excellent piece. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise with the rest of us.
Pete Jenkins
Comment #1 posted by Pete Jenkins at 9 March, 07:38 AM